And you’re entitled to one report a year from them, just like Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. There are other agencies that you can get similar reports from, like LexisNexis (insurance claims - yep, we got a new windshield a while back).
So the MIB report mentioned blood pressure issues (no surprise), and “Electrocardiogram, Q waves, abnormal. Leads 1, AVL and V6. Current or within the first year prior to application”.
Doctor Google turns up “q waves” and “heart attack” with slightly uncomfortable frequency.
Doc never told me I’d had a heart attack or any other issue with the EKG (which she did every year or thereabouts). The dates of the notes were 6ish years ago, I think when I was applying for an increase in life insurance (which was approved). Doc never said “aren’t you dead yet?” and from the chicken-scratching I can see in my copy of the medical records (this predates the electronic records system), there doesn’t seem to be anything to that effect.
I looked at the EKG printout from that time period (a couple months before the note was made) and yeah, it had squiggles. Of course, so did all the others, before and after. Short of a complete flat line, I wouldn’t know a good EKG from a drunken chicken’s footprints (or the former doctor’s handwriting).
Obviously I’ll mention this to the doc next time I go in (new doc) and come armed with the MIB report and the EKGs.
Q waves can be a normal variant, depending on their size and location. Just to clarify, was the first lead mentioned 1 or I (roman 1)? I assume since you didn’t say V1 it is the latter, but it would make a bit of a difference.
Also of concern would be whether this was your doctor’s interpretation or the automatic machine interpretation.
It looks like the Arabic numeral (1 versus I) on the MIB letter. My guess is it’s the same as Roman I given that the note specifies V6 (but not V1).
I can’t tell whether it’s the doctor’s interpretation, or what the insurance reviewer saw.
There doesn’t seem to be any indication of “OMG!!!” on any of the EKG printouts, or (from what I can tell) on the medical notes, and the next EKG was a couple years later so there must not have been anything too worrisome going on.
Even your doctor may not be able to answer with certainty.
An abnormal Q often - but not always - happens when the electrical current that tells the heart to beat is passing through some scar tissue in the heart wall. One of the more common reasons for scar tissue is an old heart attack, but it’s not the only possibility. An infection in the heart (which could be so minor as to cause no symptoms) that healed on its own is also possible, although not terribly likely. It can also happen if your electrolytes are temporarily out of whack, causing the electricity to not be conducted quite normally. This is most likely to happen if you’re sick with vomiting and diarrhea or otherwise let yourself get dehydrated.
But yes, it’s possible you had a minor heart attack and didn’t know it. Especially in women, “silent” heart attacks (heart attacks without any symptoms) are more common than most people realize. Some estimates are that over 60% of heart attacks happen without any symptoms noticed by the person having it. Most of them find out when they later have an abnormal EKG.
Much of the time, it’s not a huge deal, it doesn’t really impair function, and the only thing it means for you is that, like all of us, you should try to eat well and get regular exercise and pay attention to your cardiovascular health. But since you mention blood pressure issues, you should be doing that anyhow.
There’s an important rule in medicine: Treat the patient, not the monitor. If a patient is functioning well and taking basic common sense precautions (diet, exercise, medications as ordered, doctor’s visits and tests as recommended) I’m much more interested in how they feel and how they look than what the little squiggly lines say. Of course, I’m not a cardiologist. Cardiologists love their little squiggly lines!
Is her ekg visible here? I read the post where she describes the ekg but isnt that different than looking at a printout of the actual ekg itself?
I admit that ine if my pet peeves is self diagnosing, (or the other version of that, asking strangers online to take a stab at diagnosing you)
when i had a family member who was sick, we had a couple people throw in their “advice” or opinions on what they thought was wrong and it always boiled down to, they needed to see their own doctor
“my guess is…” “it looks like”…(in a post above, trying to answer a question about the ekg)
maybe Im just particular about medical care, but this doesnt sound like the most reliable way of having an ekg read. Guessing is ok for a recipe, not so much for an ekg
Look, you’ve seen me in at least three medical question threads since you’ve joined the board. I remember you in them. In some, I (and others) said unequivocally, “get the f* to a doctor right the f* now, do not pass go, do not collect $200!”. In others, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with giving a person general information until they can get to their doctor for more specifics. She knows we’re not diagnosing her, she knows **USCDiver **isn’t her doctor and I’m not her nurse and we’re most definitely not interpreting her EKG. She’s a long time poster here savvy enough to know which forum to put this sort of question in, and that it’s in In My Humble Opinion because that’s all she’s going to get - opinions, not diagnosis.
It is not against board policy to post or to answer medical questions. Sometimes the answer is indeed “ask your doctor, we can’t tell you anything useful.” But more often the answer is, “well here’s what it might be, or it might be this other thing; your doctor should be able to tell you more.”
It’s one of MY pet peeves that more people don’t take control of their own health information and own their own bodies and instead put their doctor on some pedestal as if she knows all, when all she knows is what she can see and what you remember to tell her in a 15 minute office visit. (No offense intended, USCDiver. I have great buckets of respect for you, but I know you don’t always have time to do copious amounts of patient education, 'cause that’s just the way it goes sometimes.)
If you think a poster should see a doctor, by all means, say so. That’s your humble opinion and quite appropriate in this forum. But it’s a very rare day when I don’t feel a person can be empowered with a little information, so she at least has some sense of the vocabulary and maybe what questions she should be asking when she does go to see her doctor.
I’m a little confused. Correct me if I’m wrong: So, you had an EKG about 6 years ago, and an insurance reviewer noted in an insurance application document that that EKG had abnormal Q waves. Your doc never said anything about it. Since then you have had several (about yearly) EKGs which did not note abnormal Q waves? Or you have never come across an interpretation of those later EKGs, so you don’t know what they showed? But either way, your doctor, who presumably requested those EKGs and has presumably reviewed them, has never said anything about them either. Is this correct?
As a reviewer of the serIes, I’d want to know (1) who made the first interpretation, (2) if that person knew what he/she was looking at, (3) if the so-called abnormal Qwave really was there in the first EKG [which is really what 1 and2 are getting at], and (4) if the abnormality was actually there in the first EKG, I’d want to know if it was also in the subsequent EKGs. That’s really the most telling point. It may have simply been due to misplaced leads,for example. All things to discuss with your doc next time.
While you’re at it, you might want to ask your doc why he/she is requesting all these (yearly?) EKGs. To my knowledge, that’s not routine for someone without a history of heart issues.
Of course its good to take some ownership of one"s healthcare…I never said its not a good idea…I read up on health information and articles that pertain to me or loved ones to be informed, ask questions etc. I also try to be aware with a new doctor how well qualified they seem, including quality of patient care. I had a doctor who would spend maybe fifteen seconds with me that raised a red flag to me…so yea, of course its really important to be aware and educated and also to self advocate when need be
Yes of course, but that’s not what you said. You said “none of us here can say” which is patently untrue. If she was interested in posting a picture of her EKG online, there are probably a half dozen members of this Board who could interpret it for her. Not that they necessarily would or should and not that one should ever trust advice from an Internet forum of course.
No, I haven’t uploaded it anywhere, and don’t plan to - I was more interested in finding out whether that phrasing was consistent with having had something like a silent heart attack. I don’t think it’s appropriate to ask people to interpret an EKG for a complete stranger. And yes, I do plan to ask my doctor.
WhyNot - thanks for the details; that’s the kind of information I was interested in learning. While this was a long time ago, I know for a fact that I hadn’t been vomiting (haven’t done that since 1985) and it’s highly unlikely I had any significant diarrhea (absent colonoscopy prep, I haven’t had more than the usual one-off bout of that in nearly as long). Nor was I especially ill from anything else (e.g. nasty asthma flareup). Would readings gradually improve after a silent attack?
Looking at the EKGs myself, nothing looked like what Doctor Google suggested such a thing should look like but there are certainly subtleties I wouldn’t catch. And it’s also entirely possible that the insurance reviewer misread / misinterpreted things in the file. The reason the MIB report is available is to let people see / correct mistakes, after all. And they must not have thought I was in too bad shape as they did issue the policy increase.
Yes, basically. My doctor never said a word. The EKGs were something she ordered every two-ish years. I assumed it was somewhat routine. With the exception of one time when I’d had a bout of vasovagal syncope - 3 years after the one in question - they were never in response to anything in particular. I will definitely be bringing it up with the new doctor (old doc went concierge, and we don’t have the spare cash for the fee, so we switched). I agree it needs to be looked at in conjunction with the other recordings, and in conjunction with the rest of my history.
As an aside: I’ve had numerous things since then that would presumably warrant a note in the MIB files (gallbladder, suspected major stomach issues, known major colon issues). Not a word about any of them. So obviously things don’t get automatically reported by the health insurers.
Not a doctor, but I read medical records daily. Just wanted to observe that “heart attack” is a pretty imprecise term. Moreover, “heart attacks” can be of various severity, with residuals ranging from none to death.
Similarly, there are countless reasons for wave abnormalities on EKG, of various duration and implications.
If you are concerned, by all means, see a doctor and have it checked out. If you have had a myocardial infaction, the scarring should show up on testing. If you are asymptommatic and don’t have huge risk factors, your doctor may feel additional testing is not worth the expense.
Hey, Dinsday, when you say residuals, are you talking about damage to the heart or related sequellae? Is there such a thing as a “heart attack” that isn’t a myocardial infarction? Would that be an arrhythmia or something similar? What would count as a heart attack but have no residuals. Really curious minds want to know.
ok, but there was no print out ofan ekg posted… since there was no mention about plans to post it, only an attempt to describe what it looked like, it sounds like thats correct. The comment I made that nobody here can say was based on what the post actually included
Like I said, I’m not a dr. But in my experience, many people call many different things “heart attacks.” Ischemia, angina, arrythmias, costochondritis… A doctor will have to chime in to say whether any of these are correctly called heart attacks, or whether that term is best reserved for MIs.
And I may use the term residual improperly, but in my Humpty Dumpty fashion it means any “after effects.” There may be some residual effects which are identifiable only on testing. Some folk have evidence of remote scarring, yet didn’t know they ever had a MI. It appears as though some MIs can occur with no significant symptoms, or be mistaken for indigestion.
Other aftereffects could be perceived symptoms - dizziness, fatigue, chest pain, whatever.
A “heart attack” really isn’t a legitimate medical term. It gets misused by lay folks to describe everything from a massive death of heart muscle to heart muscle pain due to ischemia to cardiac arrest by any cause with or without heart muscle death to heart palpitations to fainting to a collapsed lung to a hangnail, plus a few thousand others.
But when used most appropriately the term generally should be thought to mean a myocardial infarction (death of heart muscle).
And I see lots of EKGs with Q waves on them that could have been caused by a myocardial infarction, but generally aren’t. Computer-generated interpretations of EKGs are often printed on the EKG these days, but these interpretations are often very, very, VERY inaccurate.
When I read EKGs with computer interpretations on them, I’ll cross off the parts of the interpretation I don’t agree with, and write my own interpretation on it before signing it. When I agree with the interpretation, I circle it or put a check mark by it and sign it.
